Polyamide resins as typified by nylon 6, nylon 66 and the like are widely utilized for fibers for clothing, engineering plastics and others, because of their excellent characteristics of toughness, chemical resistance, electric characteristics and others and their easiness in melt molding.
ϑ-caprolactam that is a starting material for nylon 6 and adipic acid and hexamethylenediamine that are starting materials for nylon 66 are fossil resources-derived materials, but because of consideration of the global environment in recent years, it has become desired to use plant-derived materials as starting materials for polyamide resins.
Under the situation, sebacic acid, which is a plant-derived material obtainable from castor oil, has been noted and a polyamide resin produced using sebacic acid as a dicarboxylic acid component has been proposed (see PTLs 1 and 2). The polyamide resin obtained by using sebacic acid has characteristics of low water absorbability and excellent dimensional stability, and its application to electric/electronic parts and the like is expected.